‘Tough’ immigration policy on course to miss target
By Alex Stevenson Follow @alex__stevenson
Current measures will only get the government halfway towards its immigration target by 2015, Oxford University experts have claimed.
Analysis by the Migration Observatory found that ministers' pledge to cut net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands was unlikely to become reality before the next general election.
Ministers cannot control immigration from within the EU so their efforts must concentrate on non-EU immigrants. But cuts to the number of student, work and family immigrants all fall short of the numbers required.
"Since the immigration and emigration of British and other EU nationals is outside the government's control, there will always be a fundamental uncertainty about whether the target of the tens of thousands will be met," the report noted.
Net migration into Britain reached 242,000 in the year up to September 2010. Reducing this number by 142,000 will require 85,200 less students to arrive, as well as 28,400 immigrants through the work route and a further 28,400 through the family route.
Yesterday David Cameron appeared to acknowledge his policies were not likely to lead to be as successful as he hoped.
He singled out immigration as one of the issues which he felt was being watered down by the Liberal Democrats.
"I think we have all had to make compromises. If I was running a Conservative-only government, we would be making further steps on things like immigration control," he told BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the Afternoon.
"I think we would be tougher than that."
The prime minister avoided confronting the problem when asked about it in his press conference in Downing Street this morning, however.
"I think we have a very good coalition policy – a tough immigration control that includes a cap," he told journalists.
"I'm very personally keen and attached to this issue, it's something I want to see solved.
"When the public see proper immigration control in place, they will stop worrying about the issue and we can get back to the situation in the 1980s when it wasn't a front-rank political issue."
The Migration Observatory says the government faces just two viable choices, however: introduce even more restrictive policies towards non-EU nationals, or reconsider the target – or the time period in which it can be met.
